Bubbawheat

Thank you for that. I'd like to submit

Matchstick Women #3369 by @Bubbawheat
Level range 25+, 4 missions

Looking forward to seeing what themes the upcoming months bring, and glad to see someone else holding AE contests. Though I will warn you, even though I'm glad you lifted the 3 month restriction, I think having open submissions will net you a lot of submissions. The monthly theme will be a good way to restrict future months, just make sure it's not too vague so that tons of arcs kind of fit the theme, or too narrow so that very few arcs fit the theme. If you'd like any advice from someone with a little experience running AE contests, feel free to PM me or ignore me. Either way good luck!

I'll think it over this month and figure out the final system by next month's theme. I will consider removing the bottommost vote elimination, but I don't want to have an extremely easygoing drop-in/drop-out system. I think it's a good compromise to require a submission every month, but have two months - mentioned in this first month - where new people can join, or folks that missed a month can re-join.

And yet another arc up for this week.

Title: Until the End of the World
Arc ID: 431270
Author: @Archdemon (aka Eva Destruction)
Faction: Villainous
Level Range: 40-50
Difficulty: Average. One custom EB, and a custom group that is designed to be of reasonable difficulty for the level range.
Enemy Groups: Arachnos, Council, Freakshow, Customs.

Synopsis: A contact points you to an unexpected opportunity. Someone else takes the fall. An Arbiter demands justice, and he'll pay to get it. And an obsessed thief learns that sometimes it's not better to have loved and lost; not when someone like you has so much to gain.

Feedback: Please.

This was my attempt to write an arc with the "Romance" flag. The result...er, well, it's a very loose interpretation of the "Romance" flag. It does assume a certain amount of greed on your character's part, as well as a pre-existing association with your contact. Also, there are robots.

Not my character, but I can never resist when I see one of these threads pop up.

The map has to be an outdoor map to accommodate the GM.

Actually you reminded me of a new one for me.

Complete the STF - it's the only one besides the new incarnate ones (and some of the shard TFs, but they don't really count) that I haven't done.

Played this again last night. I played it quite a while ago, and it still holds up pretty well. I like most of the changes except for the map choices. Although take in mind that this is coming from someone that's played over 250 AE arcs at this point - I'm so tired of the fiery footprints map. It's an awesome map but I've been on it over a dozen times already, also the mayhem hospital. And while I'm glad that the first boss is no longer a Ballista, now he seems too easy. But it's not something that really needs changing.

A reminder, voting is open until tomorrow night at midnight Eastern time. Don't miss out!

If anyone else was planning on hosting this year's FArt competition, I will gladly step down. But this has been a yearly tradition since I've been watching the forums so I thought I'd try my hand at hosting it this year. There will also be some in-game prizes. Ok, let's go!

January's theme is Fire

In case you haven't noticed, I enjoy fire, so bring in the heat and make us forget about the weather outside.

Rules

All types of visual art are acceptable for this month's theme. Screenshot manipulations, sketches, graphic design, etc. So long as they incorporate this month's theme into the work.

1. Use City of Heroes/Villains Characters- This is, afterall, a CoX Fan Art competition, so I expect you guys to keep that in mind. If there's nothing relating to City of Heroes/Villains in your entry, you will be disqualified.

2. Keep It PG-13- All entries this month must be postable to these boards without a 2 click.

3. Deadlines- All entries MUST be submitted by Friday, January 21st by Midnight Eastern US time. Anyone participating who DOES NOT have an active account on these boards may note me via dA at Bubbawheat. I will take Saturday, January 22nd to screen all entries for adherence to the theme and rules. Voting will begin on Sunday, January 23rd, held here on the CoH boards. The pieces that I put up for a vote have been personally verified by me, so if you disagree with their qualifications, please give me the lashings rather than the artists.

Other Items of Note
We won't be having an elimination this month. The winner of the voting will have immunity for NEXT month's battle, which will have an elimination. To start off January, we pretty much just want to get a head count and see who's gonna be in this thing. If you do submit, try to keep in mind this is year-long and we want it going strong!

Things will be done slightly differently than past years. There will be a points system in place that will come into play in the latter half of the year. There will also be two months where people can jump into the contest - April and August. So keep that in mind and bring in the art!

Share yours!

Mine:

1 - spend less time in the AE building... at least until they make some more improvements.

2 - Get at least two more of my Burnt Matchstick characters up to level 50.

3 - Write another good AE arc.

4 - Play one of my Praetorians through the new arcs and out of Praetoria.

5 - Switch sides on at least two of my characters.

This week I took up the lead again and decided to go for the theme: The New Year and picked arcs published today - 1/1/11. We ran:

Happy New Year Paragon City #477611 by @DrJaso

It was a quick one mission arc on the fashion show map with a lot of Arachnos, Lord Recluse, and spelling errors. But we still got to "brake" Recluse's face and "ahve" at least some fun on it.

A Perfect Storm #477613 by @Cybernetic Hobo

This was a well crafted 5 mission arc about a high level Axis America-type group being summoned into Paragon City. Lots of new maps, well done custom groups and dialog, interesting optional objectives. The only downside was the one ambush of a high level Tsoo-type group stand-in on the Siren's Call map that was pretty much all ninja MMs. Aside from that, great find on a first day publish.

After that, we ran out of arcs that weren't farms/test arcs/really long with extreme enemies so we rolled and Zamuel won and picked his own arc

An Arachnos Slumber Party #335317 by @Zamuel

This was a fun romp through an Arachnos Slumber Party filled with pillow fights, snacks, prank calls, gossip, and party crashers. Lots of good customs and a fun overall party.

First off, I'd like to say that looks a whole heck of a lot better than anything I could do right now. It really looks great.

As for a more critical look at it, I think you might have gone a little overboard on the effects/brushes. The ice cubes splintering off look great. The ice-hair could use a different touch. As thick as the ice would be, I don't think you would get the same wobbly-but-see-through effect that you would see on the smaller ice cubes. I think there should maybe be a bit more uniformity, and a smaller spectrum of colors. The face looks amazing, but I think the skin effect again is a little over the top. I think it would benefit by having it be more... diffuse? The face looks much better than the rest of his body in regards to the shading and the frost effect. I think it's because the face is less jagged and more soft.

And of course, this is advice from an amateur, so take it with a grain of salt.

Best Heroic/Vigilante arc:

1st: Made to Wave the Flag
2nd: Golden Age Secret of the Paragon Society

Though I must say that every arc in this category I thoroughly enjoyed.

Welcome to the forums! Looking forward to seeing more of you around here. Feel free to browse around my Burnt Matchstick thread in my signature if you want something fiery to draw. Or if you're too indecisive or don't want to search through that big thread, here's the tanker who would look nice anime style, I think.

I think one option to make the choice a little more difficult to answer if option two was left with one year instead of one hour. It's still a very short amount of time when compared to time itself, but it's a much longer amount of time for a person's perspective.

Sorry I didn't get around to this week's arc, been busy with other projects and was out of town all Christmas weekend.

Edit: Wrong Number reminded me - This arc used to be a 5 star arc with over a hundred plays. A rare thing nowadays, and I know this is a 5 star worthy. It recently dropped to 4 stars, so if you rate this arc, please rate it a 5 star. Let's see if we can use this club to bring arcs up in the ratings where we can.

This week's random roll goes to:

Arc Name: Casualties of War
Arc Number: 241496
Author: Dalghyrn
Number of Missions: 5
Synopsis: On May 23, 2002, the Rikti invaded Earth. During the war that followed, tens of thousands of civilians, soldiers and heroes sacrificed their lives to save Earth. One group of heroes that made the ultimate sacrifice was The SOLUS Collective. This is the story of the sacrifice made by everyone during times of war, hero and civilian alike. This dual arc was based on the official CoH narrative of the Rikti War and adds greater depth to the time surrounding the Rikti offensive against the heroes that took place about six months after the first war began.

Oh, were you the Fawn Scout that joined us on Citadel Thursday? Sweet, glad you came, it was fun and hope you join for more.

On the twelfth day of Recluse-mas my true love gave to me,

Twelve screens of propaganda
Eleven Arachnos factions fighting
Ten Arachnoidssssss web ssssspinning
Nine missions with Becky The Tarantula Mistress
Eight Widows a'slaying
Seven Mu a'sapping
Six Arachnos soldiers
Five Aeon clones
Four Bane Spider henchmen
Three Efficiency Experts
Two flyer patrols beginning
And a crab spider on the half shell ♪ ♪♪

And Merry Christmas everyone! Thanks for making this game a fun one, hopefully it doesn't die off too quick once Christmas is over.

Join us over in the Forum Games section we've been doing this for a little while now.

There's never a good time to lose a loved one, but it's especially hard during the holidays. I wish you and your family good fortune in your tough times.

Fire/fire/fire blaster: nuke, blue, [consume], fun!

It's kind of holiday themed, and it's not all me, but nothing wrong with adding some more art here.

It's Christmas, and what better way to celebrate than to try and get a drawing of my slightly Halloween-inspired costume!



bio: